When you grow up facing the sea, the feeling of the ocean never goes away. What impressed me the most when we settled on the Basque Coast was the light and different changes of atmosphere, which proved to be even stronger off-season. The moment when the region becomes deserted of its seasonal tourists and, as for any seaside resort, when the ambiance becomes more serene and friendly. The emotion that came from it was so powerful that I felt compelled to transcribe it into images. I prefer the banality of daily life to the journalistic reporting of an imposed situation. The surreal atmosphere of cities emptied of their inhabitants after the first lockdown in 2020 gave off a fake impression of stillness, which stopped me from photographing. It would have been another approach, another subject all together. So, I decided to wait for life to return to normal before the project could resurface. Unlike a trip, where we arrive at a destination with a blank gaze; walking the streets of a familiar environment becomes a challenge. Confronting yourself daily with the same details and atmospheres, everything can seem almost too banal to be interesting. It is precisely this challenge that interested me: the simplicity of things, the fascinating aesthetic of everyday life. My exploration was exclusively by foot for a specific time, and I noticed that I always stayed within a 4km radius of my home–the same distance from Copacabana Beach, where I lived during my teens in Rio de Janeiro. This ritual became a journey with imaginary boundaries, leaving free rein to intuitions and chance as I walked. As opposed to a testimonial, my approach was to decipher a defined field in space so as to extract its essence. A sort of cartography where light and emotion were my only guides. Unintentionally, I polarized my eternal sources of inspiration: architecture, cinema and literature; reminding me of George Perec and what he called l’infra-ordinaire. Discovering characters’ attitudes from the images I just took had become a daily pleasure when I came back from a day of shooting…
Après l’Été (After Summer) is not a project about emptiness, but rather what is around it and within it. It’s about observing a fragment of reality as I see and feel it, without the pretension of telling any other story than the one you can make yourself by looking at the photographs. What we really see and what we discover over time, simply by observing closer…
Roberto Badin was born in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. He discovered photography at the age of 14. The beaches and graphic aesthetics of Oscar Niemeyer’s constructions are among his first shots. He develops a unique look at space with particular attention paid to the frame. He composes each image like a painting, using light as a tool for construction. He was invited to take part in the “Lady Dior As Seen By” project, which traveled to major world capitals. In 2017 his personal work was exhibited at Selfridges in London. His first book, Inside Japan, published by Benjamin Blanck in 2018, was hailed by the press and by the public, with two consecutive reprints. Inside Japan has been presented in several exhibitions in France including the prestigious International Photography Festival in Arles and the Museum of Asian Arts in Nice.
